Mele pleads guilty to manslaughter

GOSHEN — Michael Mele said he killed Laura Garza when she discovered he had a girlfriend, wanted to leave his apartment and got "loud" when he refused to drive her back to New York City

BY HEATHER YAKIN

GOSHEN — Michael Mele said he killed Laura Garza when she discovered he had a girlfriend, wanted to leave his apartment and got "loud" when he refused to drive her back to New York City

Mele, a convicted sex offender, admitted to the killing on Monday in Orange County Court as his murder trial was about to begin. He pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and tampering with physical evidence. In exchange, he's expected to get a negotiated 23 years in prison, plus post-release supervision by parole. A sentence of 1﻿1/3 to 4 years for evidence tampering will run concurrently.

Members of Garza's family, including her mother and brothers, watched from a courtroom gallery packed with their supporters as Judge Nicholas De Rosa asked Mele how he pleaded to charges of first-degree manslaughter and evidence tampering.

"Guilty," Mele answered to each.

As Senior Assistant District Attorney Kelle Grimmer questioned Mele for the plea, he turned to face her. He answered her questions promptly in a direct, matter-of-fact tone and made eye contact with her, making the question-and-answer proceeding seem oddly conversational.

Mele admitted that he met Garza for the first time on the night of Dec. 2, 2008, at the Marquee Club in Manhattan. He admitted that early on Dec. 3 he drove her up to Orange County, to his apartment on Regency Court in the Town of Wallkill.

Grimmer asked him what happened.

"She saw a picture of a girl, and female-related things," Mele answered. "She was upset about being there, knowing that I had a girlfriend. She wanted to leave."

He didn't want to drive back to New York City.

Garza got louder, Mele said; he acknowledged that she was justifiably upset.

"I tried to stop her from being loud," Mele said. "I put my hand over her mouth and partly over her nose.

"I panicked. Instead of calling 911, I decided to dispose of her body by myself," Mele said.

He placed her in a laundry basket and covered it up, then carried the basket outside to his Infiniti SUV. Then he drove. "I went to a location in Pennsylvania where I'd never been before, and that's where I placed her," Mele said.

He threw away the laundry basket.

The plea took all of 10 minutes — a swift ending to a long, twisted case.

After Garza's disappearance, police and volunteers searched along highways in Orange County and elsewhere, hoping to find her body or discarded pieces of evidence. It would be 16 months before Garza's remains were found in rural Pennsylvania, and two full years before prosecutors were confident enough in their case to secure an indictment against Mele. Another year passed before the case came to trial.

Mele, 26, was a registered sex offender. He had been convicted of misdemeanors for exposing himself and masturbating in front of women outside the Palisades mall in West Nyack and at other locations in Rockland County. He was on probation for those offenses when he met Garza. He had missed three mandatory sex-offender counseling sessions and moved out of his parents' home in the Town of Newburgh without notifying the state sex offender registry about his address change.

Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips will not comment on the case until Mele is sentenced.

Mele's lawyers, John Ingrassia and Craig Brown, said the plea is a reasonable deal in light of 6,000 pages of documents that prosecutors turned over.

"He was facing a 25-years-to-life sentence," Ingrassia said. With a 23-year determinate sentence, he'll be released in about 19 years and seven months.

"He engaged in a risk-reward analysis," Brown said. "He felt the circumstantial case was sufficiently strong for him not to risk a life sentence."

Brown said Mele expressed remorse, "and he's pleased that the family can have some closure."